e trend was clear enough, at all events,
to show that there was some great and not unkindly conspiracy about me
and my concerns, involving every one else's concerns as well, some
good-humoured mystery, with a dash of shadow and sorrow across it
perhaps, which would be soon cleared up; some secret withheld as from
a child, the very withholder of which seems to struggle with
good-tempered laughter, partly at one's dulness in not being able to
guess, partly at the pleasure in store.

I think it is our impatience, our claim to have everything
questionable made instantly and perfectly plain to us, which does the
mischief--that, and the imagination which never can forecast any
relief or surcease of pain, and pays no heed whatever to the
astounding brevity, the unutterable rapidity of human life.

So, as I walked in the old garden, I simply rejoiced that I had a
share in the place which could not be gainsaid; and that, even if the
high towers themselves, with their melodious bells, should crumble
into dust, I still had my dear memory of it all: the old life, the old
voices, looks, embraces, came back in little glimpses; yet it was far
away, long past, and I did not wish it back; the present seemed a
perfectly natural and beautiful sequence, and that past life an old
sweet chapter of some happy book, which needs no rewriting.

So I looked back in joy and tenderness--and even with a sort of
compassion; the child whom I saw sauntering along the grass paths of
the garden, shaking the globed rain out of the poppy's head, gathering
the waxen apples from the orchard grass, he was myself in very
truth--there was no doubting that; I hardly felt different. But I had
gained something which he had not got, some opening of eye and heart;
and he had yet to bear, to experience, to pass through, the days which
I had done with, and which, in spite of their much sweetness, had yet
a bitterness, as of a healing drug, underneath them, and which I did
not wish to taste again. No, I desired no renewal of old things, only
the power of interpreting the things that were new, and through which
even now one was passing swiftly and carelessly, as the boy ran among
the fruit-trees of the garden; but it was not the golden fragrant husk
of happiness that one wanted, but the seed hidden within
it--experience was made sweet just that one might be tempted to live!
Yet the end of it all was not the pleasure or the joy that came and
passed, the gaiety, even t